JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #36 - October 2007 - 52

USERS’ PLATFORM Succesful partners Composite cooling ducts for marine engines Various ducts and sluice-gates are installed on large marine engines and are used for introducing seawater if required for cooling the engine. Composite parts elements have been developed by the DJP Company to replace their traditional metallic counterparts while bringing many advantages. Within the Vaneo program, DJP has bound thus a partnership with its customer the SEMT-Pielstick firm (now Man Diesel), the SERAM (a laboratory of the ENSAM school), and SPL Mecatronic (Cluster of enterprises specialized in mechanics of the Seine Amont area) to build up this new solution. assembly or adhesives, has entered into a joint venture with SEMT-Pielstick, SERAM (ENSAM), and SPL Mecatronic, to research applications for such composite products. The plans and specifications produced by the SEMT-Pielstick partner required special skills in the following areas: maintaining the pressure (until 6 bars); ensuring that the material could withstand vibrations; guaranteeing no fatigue fail from during the lifetime of the product (10 years), ensuring watertightness; that materials permanently exposed to seawater did not corrode and guaranteeing the geometry and especially the interchangeability between existing products and new products. The Y-duct is a bronze insert specially desi-gned to ensure the function of sectioning off a partition wall, ensuring that the coupling is watertight but without destroying the liner into which it is counter-sunk. It is created by means of two flanges created in one piece with the body of the duct. Water tightness is ensured by contact with the polyethylene flange of the liner which is reinforced by the composite. These flanges have waterproof threaded joints that are screwed into the materials. One of the arms of the elbow joint has a rigorously precise external geometry that is ensured by the design adopted by DJP This feature . is necessitated by the function of coupling to an external duct, connected by means of a special “marine” joint. A linking box assuring a two ways sluicegate function (figure 2). The outer dimensions of this gate are of 340 x 350 x 370 mm3. (1) JEAN-PIERRE MATTEÏ - GÉRANT, DIRECTEUR TECHNIQUE D J P (2) PHILIPPE PINAULT - RESPONSABLE BUREAU ETUDES MOTEURS MAN DIESEL (3) HÉLÈNE RAMBERT DÉLÉGUÉE GÉNÉRALE AU SPL MECATRONIC SEINE AMONT PR. ABBAS TCHARKHTCHI RESPONSABLE DU LABORATOIRE LIME (ENSAM) 3 S ea water Cooling ducts and sluicegate installed on large marine engines are usually made in a foundry from cast iron or steel. The technical developments of such engines have resulted in special localizations driving harsher promptings on equipments with potential risks of worse failures. Studies have been performed with the aim of making the devices lighter and reducing their exposure to the sort of severe vibrations with which they normally have to contend. At first, the devices were made of titanium but the results were not sufficiently conclusive to be adopted permanently. DJP one of the specialists in , producing hollow “in-one-shot” devices from composite materials designed and created monolithically with no need for New products The development has been focused on the making of the two following products, both part of the engine water cooling circuit: a Y-shaped duct with an inner diameter of 140 mm and an outer size of 450 x 450 x 300 mm3.(figure 1). Fig. 1: the Y-duct Fig. 2: the sluice gate JEC Composites Magazine / No36 October - November 2007

JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #36 - October 2007

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #36 - October 2007